Thanks to NEEKEREJ from MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie for hosting this week’s photo challenge. Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to write ” a clerihew. This is a four line poem biographical poem satirizes famous people.” As well, for A to Z Challenge, the GoodRead’s quote is from an author with a name beginning with the letter M (first or last name).

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Credit: Julian Majin
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” I don’t wonder anymore what I’ll tell God when I go to heaven when we sit in the chairs under the tree, outside the city……..I’ll tell these things to God, and he’ll laugh, I think and he’ll remind me of the parts I forgot, the parts that were his favorite. We’ll sit and remember my story together, and then he’ll stand and put his arms around me and say, “well done,” and that he liked my story. And my soul won’t be thirsty anymore. Finally he’ll turn and we’ll walk toward the city, a city he will have spoken into existence a city built in a place where once there’d been nothing. ” ― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

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She’s brilliantly famous you know,

The lady of who Led Zeppelin sings of so;

Buying the stairway to Heaven, sighing,
When the stores are all closed, surprised.

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is poem type called an elegy – a poem that mourns or honors someone dead or something gone by. Center the elegy on an unusual fact about the person or thing being mourned. ” An elegy generally combines three stages of loss: first there is grief, then praise of the dead one, and finally consolation.” Please see Literary Devices for more information.

I’ve paired this prompt with The A to Z Challenge quote, having the author/quoter’s name begin with the letter C.

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Credit: Danika and Peter via UnSplash

———“We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.” ― CassandraClare, City of Heavenly Fire

“A Villanelle is a nineteen-line poem consisting of a very specific rhyming scheme: aba aba aba aba aba abaa.
The first and the third lines in the first stanza are repeated in alternating order throughout the poem, and appear together in the last couplet (last two lines).”

Phallon watched the fish swim in the pond his Grandpa had installed in his backyard. He enjoyed visiting his Grandpa each Saturday. Grandpa had put the pond in because young Phallon loved the fish so much as a toddler; ‘fishes’ had been his first word.

Now he sat with Grandpa who asked him about school and of course the girls in his school. Uncomfortable, Phallon wished Grandpa didn’t ask him about that.

Grandpa simply laughed,”Phallon, I’m only teasing you. It’s good you have friends who are girls and that there are girls you like. This Jennifer, have you asked her out?”

Phallon’s face turned red, “Yeah we’ve gone to a movie together and bowling. I want her to be my girlfriend but her parents say she’s too young to have a boyfriend.”

Grandpa nodded a smile on his face, “You’ll find the right one when you’re older. When I saw your Grandma the first time, my heart lept out of my chest. I wonder if I will ever meet that right girl of yours and see you marry her?”

Phallon felt uncomfortable again, “Why wouldn’t you be there Grandpa? You’re only eighty-one?”

Grandpa patted Phallon’s hand then squeezed it, “You know, my boy, I’ve been sick a long time. It’s a battle I’ve mostly conquered, but my strength is waning these days.When you get married someday, think of your old Grandpa, okay?” Phallon nodded feeling a lump in his throat.

Two-years later Grandpa succumbed. Phallon was sixteen and felt raw inside. He returned to the fish pond in Grandpa’s back yard. He noticed the fishes were floating and the reality of life made tears wet his cheeks. In the mess of the last two weeks including Grandpa’s funeral, no one had remembered to feed the fish.

I was sitting on a ferry boat, on my way to a speciality grocery store, when I heard yelling and screaming from behind where I sat. A fifty-some couple were engaged in a physical and verbal sparring match with Peppy the dachshund literally in the middle.

Margo, refused to give Peppy up to her ex-boyfriend, Simon.”He was my dog before we started going out, and he’s my dog now that we’re breaking up.”

“That’s not fair, he’s part of my family now. Peppy sits by me most of the day because I work from home. He should be with me in the week. You can have Peppy on weekends,” Simon countered.

Margo scoffed and was about to jab Simon in the chest when Peppy managed to squeeze his way out from between both owners.

They chased him down the steps and down to the plank where people walked onto the ferry. Peppy jumped in the water, the plank in the process of being removed, and swam to shore before running away.

Everyone either loves or hates fruit bread and more often than not, this stiff and solid rock like cake which sits in your stomach as if you’ve ingested a stone, is detested by many people. No matter the tradition or reason we bake/eat fruit bread at Christmas, it is a custom many of us wonder about; I can honestly say, however, there is only one fruit bread in the world I love because it tastes wonderful and is nothing like any fruit bread I’ve ever tasted before, or will ever taste again.

Grandma’s fruit bread wasn’t like traditional loaves of fruit bread because it was soft and tempting as I believe, any kind of bread should be; inside her bread was sugared and candied fruits much like traditional fruit bread, except my Grandma’s fruit bread was melt in your mouth and we used to toast a small slice or two for breakfast during the holidays and have it with becel; the buttery, sweet, soft bread was delicious and makes me hungry thinking about it; Grandma’s fruit bread was not traditional fruit bread — it was a million times better.

Why Do I Write? What a question. It’s a difficult concept for me to explain. I have said before, writing is likebreathing for me and I know many other writers can relate.

While some people talk a great deal and say everything they’re thinking outloud, some of us prefer to put our thoughts to paper or on a keyboard. You see, such as it is with conversation, when words fly from a talkative person’s mouth nearly unfiltered, the words I write or type flow from my mind to my hands and there isn’t any stopping them.

Where ever I go I write. It’s my most comfortable form of communication. Sometimes, if I have something vital I need to express, I write it down first and then later, I remember what I wrote as I speak it outloud.

I make lists. I always have. I take notes listening to a TED Talk I want to remember, or some other new activity I’m attempting to learn. I make notes or highlight in books on my IPAD or in hard copy. Sharing my thoughts and remembering what I’m learning, is vital to me.

I’m not exactly sure why my tendency is to write first, other than when I write what I need to say, my soul flutters free. I let go of my burdens when I write and make the points in conversation I couldn’t say as concise or eloquently outloud.

Moreover, I think in writing. As I drift to sleep, I think in poetry. I think in half-rhymes, in full rhymes, in metaphor, assonance, alliteration, simile, personification, and in changing points of views.

Writing makes me consider character and the motivation of people in real life going about their everyday activities.I wonder why they do what they do? How they do what they do? What person hides under their public persona?

I don’t always want to know the answers but I wonder and I’m full of questions. I don’t trust easily, but I feel a kinship with those who also use words such as I do, to unburden themselves, to prove a significant point.

I write because what else would I do? I have always written and writing has become my breath. I write because writing is me and if you want the truth of me, it is most easily found in what I write

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